Tuesday, April 24, 2007

What is the world coming to?

Yesterday AM I was routinely checking my online banking to check the status of things, when I notice a $500 ATM withdrawl in SF. I think for a second, then another... then I frantically try to figure out what the hell is going on. Coincidentally, the day of the withdrawl I just so happened to be in SF, but at the beach and I never used my card. I immediately got on the phone with BofA, they told me that someone was pulling money out from my account, duh. They tell me I should call my dad to see if he had lost his card, so I called him, nope still has his card, so I get BofA on the line again, and they put a hold on my account, phew, now I'm safe because there is a hold on my account..... nope.

I check my online banking again later in the day after I had went to the bank to change my pin, and notice another $500 missing from my account, ATM withdrawl, this time in Berkeley. Naturally, my mood shifts from phew to homicidal rage. So once again I'm on the line with BofA and I basically say "wtf", my account is supposed to be on hold, thus you cannot withdraw money? right? isnt that what a hold is?

Apparently, my card wasn't being used, but my Dads card was, and since our accounts are linked this person withdrew money from my account, not knowing the difference. The first Bank of America agent I spoke to NEVER at any point in our conversation mentioned that it wasn't even my card being used, holy crap that seems like a pretty vital piece of information, yet the 3rd person I talked to says it clearly stated that my card wasn't being used. WOW.

So roughly 2 nanoseconds later I am speed dialing my Pops to put a hold on his account, because apparently, putting a hold on my account doesn't prevent HIM with from taking money from my account, it only prevents ME from taking money from my account, and the person willingly put the hold on my account KNOWING that his card was being used and that someone would still be able to withdraw money from my account. OMG!!

In a rage, I'm on the phone with BofA for a final time explaining the situation to them, only to find out that I'm a moron for thinking a hold on my account protects me from others withdrawing from it, and I get a bunch of attitude from the rep because I'm a little bit frustrated that yet another withdrawl was made. I am in disbelief that I trust my money to people so incompetent.

bg Bank of America

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Parsing Digg's RSS Feeds

I thought someone might find this useful, but when you are trying to pull an RSS feed via something like PHP, it simply won't work on its own. For instance, if you try to do something along the lines of it will give you an error, yet when you go to your browser and pull up the feed everything is gravy, ftw!?

So after an hour or so of googling and finding nothing because I had nowhere to start, I decided to pull up telnet and give it a shot the old fashioned way :)

telnet digg.com 80;
get / http/1.1 \n\n

Nada!!

so... ok...

telnet digg.com 80;
Host: Digg.com
get / http/1.1 \n\n

Still nothing!

Finally, I try

telnet digg.com 80;
Host: whatever.com
Referer: something.net
User-agent: some browser
get / http/1.1 \n\n

Zoip!

Wala, one of these is the magic one, through process of elimination, I find the are requiring a referrer. Weird... so... how do you fix this in PHP you ask? Simple...

ini_set('user_agent', 'Anything here');

Well, there you have it, your one line fix for parsing Digg.

Monday, April 16, 2007

Putting down the wrench

Well, every man has a moment in his life where he realizes he needs to stop doing something, I think for now at least, I'm done working on cars, and I'm going to put my efforts towards more worthwhile endeavors.. most importantly the person leasing the garage has let me out of my lease, with a big catch, but thats ok...

Whats important is that now I will have more time to work on things like random projects (long, evil laugh...) =P and do things like writing blogs, woohoo.